Of course he could just have been checking the bin’s stability and fitness for purpose. Maybe that would be his story.

This weekend at the Caversham National Training Centre the fitness for purpose of the GB rowing squad will be further inspected as the process of selecting personnel for Rio 2016 grinds through another key stage with a weekend of gruelling trials - against the clock, and then against fellow competitors in side-by-side racing.

Gregory’s efforts at Lee Valley placed him sixth overall on a day when his GB colleague Moe Sbihi won with a phenomenal time of 5min 41.8sec, beating the 11-year-old British record of 5:42.3 set by Matthew Pinsent.

This weekend, Gregory and Sbihi will be on the same team again as favourites in the men’s pairs event, where their main rivals will include the pairing of double Olympic fours champion Pete Reed and Constantine Louloudis.

The trials will also offer another double Olympic champion, Andy Triggs Hodge, a further opportunity to test his returning fitness after a year off through illness as he pairs up with Matt Langridge.

Gregory’s blog on his website offers graphic evidence of the harshness of a training regime that has produced a succession of British world and Olympic champions over the last couple of decades, under the precise and ruthless supervision of the heavyweight men’s chief coach, Jurgen Grobler.

Gregory describes the daily purgatory of weights and ergos at the high altitude training camp in the Sierra Nevada where he and his team-mates were ensconced in October.

“These two disciplines, when combined for many hours a day, take us to a breaking point, but that’s not all,” writes Gregory. “At altitude it’s difficult to sleep...”

Gregory then recalls a comment about the camp tweeted to him a few days earlier by Pinsent: “Rite of passage that place. Decades of medals won up there.”

He adds: “He’s absolutely right. Jurgen Grobler has been bringing his teams up here since 1997 and the number of world and Olympic medals that can partly be attributed to the training done up here are too numerous to count.”

Having held off the challenge of the German eight by just 0.18sec in this year’s World Championship final, the British men’s flagship contains not a shred of complacency.

“Not a single member of our squad however is under the illusion that the job is done,” writes Gregory. “Three years of this Olympic cycle has gone past and only now does the job really begin.

“Jurgen has already indicated that this Autumn will be tough, ‘Hot’ as he puts it. But I already know this, it’s Olympic year and it always is. Competition within our squad is unrelenting, every day it’s a battle to get on top. If you’re on top it’s a battle to stay on top, to maintain your position, fitness, strength, and chances of being selected. There is no let-up, not a single day where you can back off that mindset because if you do, someone will sneak ahead and take your place.”

That goes for all categories – Olympic, Paralympic, heavyweight, lightweight, men and women.

In the women’s single scull competition, Vicky Thornley, who partnered London 2012 champion Katherine Grainger in the double sculls this season and has won the last two GB trials, will be under pressure to maintain her preeminence. 

Among her closest expected challengers will be the woman who partnered Grainger to that Olympic triumph and has now returned after three years away, Anna Watkins, Grainger herself and others such as Melanie Wilson.

And add to that formidable list the pair who will be seeking Rio places in sweep rowing rather than the sculling events, the London 2012 champions in the pair, Helen Glover and Heather Stanning.

By dint of the London 2012 programme, it was the latter pairing which registered the landmark first Olympic gold for the British team. Stanning took a year out in 2013 as she was serving as a Royal Artillery Captain in Helmand Province, but the two have been unbeaten since 2011, registering European, Olympic and world records in the process.

At this year’s World Championships, they romped away to another gold by almost four seconds from the chasing New Zealand pair.

The 12 selections for this Sunday’s British Sports Personality of the Year award include eight world champions – three from athletics (Mo Farah, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Greg Rutherford), and others from gymnastics (Max Whitlock), cycling (Lizzie Armistead), Formula One (Lewis Hamilton), boxing (Tyson Fury) and swimming (Adam Peaty).

Yet no rower, not even the perennially golden pairing of Glover and Stanning, features. Odd business. Maybe they'll get a mention in the Team of the Year section which Pinsent and Steve Redgrave won in 1992 and 1996...

You could argue it's invidious to reward one member of a team over another, especially a team of two. But that didn't prevent Redgrave being voted BBC Sports Personality of the Year in 2000 - and Golden Sports Personality of the Year in 2003. 

Asked this week about the relative lack of coverage she and her partner-in-excellence receive, Glover responded: “Do I think it's strange? Yes, sometimes I do. I suppose it's just the way the media works and sport works.”

For rowing, it seems, despite the proud heritage of the past 20 years, the triumphs have to be Olympic to register with the wider public.